The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see
...

The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see resource for landlubbers and mariners alike.

Carol Gafford is a public librarian, family historian, amateur archivist and book savior. She is currently the youth services/outreach librarian at the Swansea Public Library and volunteers for several museum and historical societies including the Marine Museum at Fall River, the Swansea Historical Society and the Bristol Historical and Preservation society. She is the editor of Past Times, the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists and is always looking for a new project to take on.

While he's now a committed part of the Austin, Texas songwriters' community, Slaid Cleaves always returns for an annual tour of his New England roots. This summer's New England swing opens Saturday night with a show at The Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, and then moves on to Club Passim in Harvard square on Monday night.

Cleaves grew up in South Berwick, Maine, and graduated from Tufts. It was during a college semester he spent in Cork, Ireland that he really learned how to play guitar. But it's his songwriting that immediately turned heads in the music community, with his knack of portraying regular people's lives and struggles, with literary precision but also warmth and empathy. Moving to Austin to further his musical career, after some years spent working odd jobs to support himself around New England, Cleaves won the New Folk Artist award at the prestigious Kerrville Folk Festival in 1992.

This month, Cleaves released his 12th album, "Still Fighting the War," on Music Road Records and it contains some songs that are stunning for their emotional impact. Cleaves isn't afraid to tackle difficult subjects, and he doesn't pull any punches, so listeners who just want easy escapism ought to look elsewhere. But if you appreciate music and lyrics that force you to think and consider other perspectives, Slaid Cleaves is your man. Music that matters, in other words, which is part of the Narrows Center's credo.

The most obvious example of that on the new album is the title cut, where Cleaves takes a sympathetic look at returning veterans who battle to re-enter normal life. It's impossible not to be moved by lines like "Barely sleeping and you can't get through to the VA on the phone, No one's hiring and no one wants to give you a loan, And everyone else is carrying on just like they've always done before, You've been home for a coupla years now, buddy, but you're still fighting the war.."

"Still Fighting the War" is one of several co-writes on this album, with Ron Coy credited as Cleaves' collaborator.

"Ron is not a professional writer," Cleaves said from his home outside Austin. "He's worked on an exploration rig in the Gulf of Mexico, been a wrangler, and a bouncer in a topless club. He's a bigger-than-life kind of Texan. Actually he only wrote four words in that song, but they were the most important four words--the title in fact. He said them while he was telling me about a buddy of his who'd just passed away, a Vietnam vet who'd had a tough life. He said his friend had been 'still fighting the war.' That was the capstone I needed for this song. I had been working on it for four years, based on observing our many contemporary returning vets, and had about ten different versions that never seemed to hit what I wanted. When Ron said those words, I knew I had it, the phrase that would tie it all together."

Fans can download the song "Still Fighting the War" through Cleaves' website, www.slaidcleaves.com, with all proceeds going to Operation Homefront, which aids veterans.

Naturally, one wonders what prompts such a talented writer to seek co-writers, assuming most of the collaborators end up providing more than Coy's potent phrase.

"I started working with co-writers in the late 1990s," said Cleaves. "I had been working really hard and didn't seem like I was getting anywhere. I took the big step of sharing songs, hoping to make it better. Two heads are better than one, as they say. But really, it helps by giving you a new perspective, a fresh look at what you're doing and trying to accomplish. It taught me to be more self-critical."

"The decision to look for co-writers was a big step for me, in taking my music from hobby to career," Cleaves added. "I almost did it out of desperation--if I had enough ideas for songs all by myself, I'd probably still do it all alone. But co-writing was something I decided to resort to, in order to get things done--like a lot of writers I had a lot of song fragments and unfinished things."

Two more co-writes on the album are with Cleaves' high school buddy Rod Picott, and both were also done by Picott on his excellent album "Welding Burns" from a couple years ago. The most striking one there is "Rust Belt Fields," which looks at a city where an auto plant has left and the workers are adjusting to seeing their way of life devastated. Celebrating the previous good wages, while also admitting perhaps some got a bit too comfortable, Cleaves and Picott write: "But they figured it out, And shipped the elbow grease, Down to Mexico and off to the Chinese, And I learned a little something about the way things are, No one gets a bonus for bloody knuckles and scars, No one remembers your name, Just for working hard.."

While Picott's version is wistful roots rock, Cleaves take on the new album is much more intimate, almost eerie for how haunting his world-weary voice sounds. The other Cleaves/Picott number is "Welding Burns," a more personal story about a family who worked in a navy yard, and how their big dreams melted away in years of hard work and hard living--"I used to dream a lot, Now I can't remember what it was that I was dreaming of.."

As affecting as those vignettes are, as someone portraying working folks' lives, in the grand tradition of Woody Guthrie, does Cleaves ever encounter fans who object, or have opposing views?

"I have not encountered any resistance, let's say," Cleaves replied with a chuckle. "Of course the places I play are probably more skewed to the left side of the question anyway. But I started singing "Rust Belt Fields" in Austin a couple summers ago, and people took to it right away. I know when I played it in places like St. Louis, or Dayton, Ohio, where those kinds of things happened, it got a really visceral response. Those places that suffered more from this kind of job losses and dislocation really took to it as an opportunity to vent. I really felt that kind of strong reaction all through the Midwest."

We suggested that perhaps Cleaves' own experience at working a long list of menial jobs gave him special insight into the workers' feelings.

"But I never lasted very long at any of those type jobs," Cleaves laughed. "I was just awful at most of them, and just trying to make ends meet in-between music gigs."

Cleaves doesn't just write and sing about serious issues, and the new CD also has a passel of more conventional subject matter, like the tear-in-your-beer ballad "Without Her," or the chronicle of a romance through the years, "Gone," which suggests we should cherish every moment. "Gone" is a co-write with Nicole St. Pierre.

"Nicole is just a friend, and again, not a professional songwriter," Cleaves explained. "Years ago in a conversation she threw out a fact, that her grandma would always say "you turn around and it's gone." I felt it was a cute old lady phrase, but I always remembered it. About a year ago, Nicole wrote out four or five verses, almost more like poetry. It's all her word construction, and all I just put a melody to it. Her original was a bit more free-form, so I changed some of the meter and so on, so I could sing it."

Another romantic song sure to gain attention is Cleaves' witty "Texas Love Song," wherein the singer declares his love is so strong, it might even surpass his love for the Lone Star State. "For you I'd trade my truck in for a Lexus, I love you even more than I love Texas.."

"A real good friend just told me the new album is kinda light," Cleaves laughed. "I guess that's a commentary on how downbeat some of my previous ones have been."

Another Texas-centric tune is "God's Own Yodeler," which immortalizes Texas country crooner Don Walser.

"I used to open shows for Don Walser when I first came to Texas," said Cleaves. "He became kind of a mentor to me. I even opened for him one time at Johnny D's in Somerville, but he was a wonderful man with an unforgettable voice."

Circling back to that theme of "seize the moment," Cleaves' album ends with "Voice of Midnight," which contemplates mortality and the hope of leaving nothing important undone. It's not exactly beach party material, but it is an affirming and ultimately uplifting song.

"That last one was put on this record at the last minute," Cleaves noted. "We had it written for the previous one, but felt my last album had enough musings on mortality. I like this really ethereal treatment we gave it here, and it's one of those things I just felt I had to do."

Cleaves performs in various formats, with bigger bands more likely closer to Austin, but on this tour he'll be accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Cholo Jacques.

"In the last few years I have settled into the duo format," Cleaves said. "I can rotate three or four musicians in and out, so nobody gets burned out with all the traveling. Cholo is a terrific fiddle and mandolin player from Tripping Springs, Texas. I generally take the winter off to write. These New England swings are kind of a regular, seasonal thing, and my folks of course are still in Maine so it's a good time to visit for three or four weeks. I love the Narrows Center and Club Passim--two places whose essence lies in their fans and volunteers. Not every town has venues like that, and I'm glad they exist."